


Doubt

by greygerbil



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 15:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8758942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Genji spends his first night in the Shambali monastery wondering if he belongs there at all. Zenyatta tries to put his mind at ease.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Genyatta Week 2016, prompt "Firsts".

Genji didn’t know how late into the night it was when he gave up on finding sleep, but it felt like he had been tossing and turning for hours. Past the red curtain, a moonbeam snuck into the room that the Shambali had allowed him to use, illuminating the simple mattress and blanket as well the swords that leaned against the wall. His weapons had been the only possessions he had carried with him when he had arrived; fitting, as fighting seemed to be the only purpose his body still served, too.

Habitually, Genji strapped the swords onto himself before he stepped outside onto the wooden walkway. The bells that hung from the rooftops of the village the omnics had built around the temple chimed gently in the wind with the noise of small silver birds. He descended the stairs into the village plaza. Snowflakes fell like stars that had detached themselves from the dark sky. He found himself wandering aimlessly between the stone houses. Though there were mostly omnics living here, it was quiet now. Genji assumed they used the time of darkness to meditate and recharge.

This was his first night at the monastery and already Genji doubted his decision to stay, and that, in turn, angered him even more. Did he even deserve to be among the Shambali with such a fickle heart? Should he not leave his room so someone with a better disposition could have it and make use of their teachings?

“Are you not cold?”

Genji turned his head. Floating behind him was Zenyatta. He was the monk who had actually made Genji consider staying here in the first place. While Genji had streaked about the temple like a cat around a mousehole, too desperate for something to give him hope to leave it be, too cynical to ask, Zenyatta had engaged him time and again, answered his many piercing questions with eternal patience and finally convinced him to give staying for a while a try.

Now, Zenyatta was draped in a long, simple, beige piece of cloth which hung off him as he hovered in the air. Genji supposed even a simple service omnic like him had some temperature sensors to keep him from staying too long in an environment where parts of him could freeze, so it made sense he would protect himself, since there was an icy north wind blowing through the little village. However, Genji’s new body was resistant to being frozen by a winter night, much more so than one that showed as many open wires and gaps as Zenyatta’s.

“All but the worst cold could not harm me,” he said.

“But you still feel it, don’t you?” Zenyatta gestured at him to follow. “There should be a few spare mantles around.”

It was true, but Genji was so uncomfortable in this body that was not truly his that the difference was hardly important. In a way, it was almost reassuring to feel this piece of technology, with bits of leftover flesh grafted to it, hurt. Sometimes, it surprised him it still could.

However, he did not want to explain his confusing and foolish thoughts to Zenyatta, so he only walked after him into a small hut. Many houses were constructed without any doors or even curtains, since the village belonged to the Shambali alone and no one would come all the way up here into the mountains to steal their candles and brooms and wooden chairs. From a box, Zenyatta took a simple green cape, just a large cloth with a hole for the head cut in, which parted a little in the front so the arms could still be used. Genji pulled it over his head.

“Did I disturb you?” Genji asked.

“No, I was out, anyway. I do enjoy the solitude of the village at night.”

“Then I should not bother you further,” Genji said, with a brief nod.

“You aren’t. I do wonder why you are not asleep, though.”

Again, Zenyatta led the way and Genji followed without being prompted this time. Together, they moved along the path through the huge stone gate outside, where only the mountains surrounded them now, the wind tearing harder at their mantles. Freshly fallen snow crunched under Genji’s feet.

In the shifting chaos of his thoughts, the kind monk Zenyatta had quickly become a rock. However, it was also his calm stability which aggravated the hurt and frightened part of Genji to poke and prod and provoke him, almost daring Zenyatta to budge and fail him and prove Genji’s hopelessness right.

“There are a lot of people who want you dead,” Genji said, instead of an answer.

“Is that so?” Zenyatta asked gently, not commenting on Genji’s strange non sequitur. “Why so?”

“Not you specifically, but all of you here. All omnics who think they have a right to claim to be like humans. Doesn’t that ever make you angry?”

“I could be angry, but what would that gain me? If I can, I will defend those who need it if I see no other way, but I would rather not fight at all. I believe if I approach someone with an unsteady, furious mind of my own, then I can only create more problems and, at worst, prove their prejudices right.”

“But it would be fair to be angry!” Genji argued.

“Fair, but not helpful.”

Glancing at the village walls, Genji walked a few steps from Zenyatta, then back, facing him again.

“Does it not feel like hiding, being here? It’s easy not to grow resentful if you never face the world outside.”

“I was not assembled here, Genji. Believe me when I say that I have gathered my fair share of unpleasant experiences.”

Though Genji immediately realised that he had overstepped his boundaries suggesting that one who had essentially been kept as a slave before he ended up here didn’t know of suffering, Zenyatta didn’t sound insulted.

“I would like to leave at some point and talk to more people as I talk to you,” Zenyatta continued, his hands folded in his lap. “But before we go out and change the world, we first have to change ourselves or all we will bring to others is more disquiet. That is something I do not want.”

Genji looked out onto the mountains, feeling stupid now for his unneeded aggression. Zenyatta had shown him nothing but kindness and he threw it in his face just to see if he could shake him. Sometimes, he still acted like little more than an unruly child.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You came out here tonight to find peace and I am trying to take it away.”

“I’m not angry at you, Genji. It would be very difficult to find a reason to be, anyway. After all, haven’t you been mostly talking about yourself?”

Genji, who’d been moving back towards the gate, stopped, staring at Zenyatta.

“Who do you think _you_ are hiding from here?” Zenyatta asked.

Genji had never told anyone outside of Overwatch what had happened to him and there it had not been a topic he had discussed, either; it was just that due to the way that he had been introduced to the organisation that key people knew. Because of that, he found himself suddenly tongue-tied.

“You don’t have to tell me. You should simply ask yourself,” Zenyatta said, inclining his head.

He turned away a little to face the mountains, maybe to give Genji a chance to slink off to his bedroom without feeling like he was fleeing again. Genji, however, stood rooted to the spot.

“My brother,” he said, slowly.

“Why so?”

“He killed me – tried to kill me. Sometimes it feels like he succeeded, despite the fact that someone found me and patched me up,” Genji said, bitterness filling him again. There had never been much love lost between him and his brother, but, for all that, they had still been family, both blood of the dragon. “So, according to your philosophy, I have to be nice to him even if he wants me dead?”

“You don’t _have_ to do anything,” Zenyatta said. “Everyone must find their own path. But right now, does it _help_ you to be angry at him?”

“No,” Genji admitted, after a moment. “But should I just let him get away with what he did?! Should I sit in some monastery while he is free to do as he pleases?!”

“Depending on how dangerous your brother is to others, at some point, it may feel like your responsibility to stop him,” Zenyatta said. “Is he currently killing people?”

“No – not as far as I know,” Genji said, grudgingly.

“Then you can afford to let your brother go for now. I understand if you hate him and you probably want revenge. But even if in that moment you create a balance, revenge is not justice.”

For the first time since Genji had known him, Zenyatta unfolded out of his mystic flight. His feet silently met the snowy ground. Standing next to him, he looked just like a regular service omnic, simply made, a little shorter than Genji even, the sort of which he had ignored thousands in his life as they moved around him to do their work.

“I, too, have been angry at people in the past and I know the temptation. But if you give in, you let the rage have the chance to consume you. You give so much power to those who want nothing good for you. I doubt your brother deserves that.”

“No,” Genji said, again, quietly, the memory of Hanzo leaning over his body once more before his eyes, remembering the life seeping out of him as he stared up at his older brother, “he doesn’t.”

“Ultimately, fulfilling one desire for destruction will only lead to another. It will become the way you deal with life. Thus, if you act out of fury, you risk eventually destroying what good your initial act of violence might have caused at first.”

Genji thought about the satisfaction that he had felt dismantling his own family’s criminal empire. Unquestionably, he had done what was necessary, but while he had done it, the good of the people of Japan had not been foremost in his mind; and ultimately, it had not left him happier, either.

“Then what should I do instead?”

“That I don’t know. I am not you – but if you want to heed my advice, I would try to heal your own pain first before it twists you. ” Glancing towards the stone gate of the village again, Zenyatta cocked his head a little. “This is not the worst place to start on your journey.”

For a moment, Genji just breathed in the cold, clean air. It seemed so strange to him that Zenyatta would take all this time out of his night just to talk to him. Unlike the people at Overwatch, he had nothing to gain from trying to keep Genji stable, no agenda that Genji could make out. He was simply here because it was painfully apparent that Genji needed someone.

Carefully, he glanced at the omnic next to him.

“Would you be willing to take me as your student?” he asked.

For the first time, Genji thought he might have surprised Zenyatta a little. He was still for a moment before he said: “The Shambali will all be happy to offer you their assistance.”

“Yes, I know.” He also knew that the Shambali took individual students, though, and Zenyatta had mentioned that he had had a few prior to meeting Genji. “But I feel that what you say resonates with me the most.”

“If that is what you wish, I would be glad.”

Genji thought of the rock in the sea again. Perhaps he had finally managed to grab onto it and pull himself to safety; perhaps he wouldn’t drown.

Zenyatta was looking at the sky.

“As your teacher, I think my first piece of advice would be for us to head inside quickly. These clouds mean that a snow storm is upon us.”

Behind the cold steel of his faceplate, Genji smiled a little.

“I wouldn’t reject your wisdom, Master,” he said, with a fleeting touch of humour that he had thought long lost. He watched Zenyatta resume his floating position, which gave him a grace that belied his simple steel frame, and followed him into the sanctuary of the monastery village’s walls.


End file.
